quote:I'd figure that the difference between these two things would be very important for someone who is so adamantly a Christian. Odd that.
quote:I have noticed that for some people, the little line in one's brain that makes the distinction between "worth dying for" and "worth killing for" does not seem to exist.
In either situation, someone is dying, and someone is killing. The threshold requirements of each are the same. Why should I hold any other person's life more sacred than my own? I hold all human life sacred - but not to the extent that life is the most sacred things.
Tom, of course I see them as being different, otherwise I would have not listed them separately. Actually, in many respects, killing for something is far more efficient than dying for it. I can only die to protect my family once. But I can kill a lot of people who threaten my family if needs must.
What things are worth dying for? What things are worth killing for? Where do they diverge, in practical terms?
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To clarify, I should add that implicit in "worth dying for" and "worth killing for" are "in order to protect/preserve".
I would be willing to kill or die in order to protect my wife, but if she were to order me to kill someone who is not a threat, I would not be willing.
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The threshold for each are not the same. The threshold for killing someone else may be low, especially for sociopaths. After all, pulling a trigger and ending another's life cost's you, personally, little. Fanatics are good at saying "our cause is worth your life."
The threshold for giving your life, willingly, is higher. Even the threshold for risking your own life is much higher than that of risking another. As you point out, your life is more prescious to you--you only get one. While other lifes have a different value depending on your morality. (You hold them in higher regard than the terrorists you are fighting).
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My thresholds are the same - I will willingly kill or die only to protect the same set of things. I am not a fanatic nor a sociopath (at least, I hope not). My causes are these:
Family - wife, children, protection thereof. Liberty - from slavery. Religion - freedom to practice, insomuch that it does not remove any other person's freedom to practice. Nation - preservation thereof as a single entity under the Constitution.
Any of these I would either die to protect or kill to protect as appropriate. But the bar is the same - are these things in danger, and would loss of life be necessary to protect?
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quote: To clarify, I should add that implicit in "worth dying for" and "worth killing for" are "in order to protect/preserve".
I would be willing to kill or die in order to protect my wife, but if she were to order me to kill someone who is not a threat, I would not be willing.
You miss out on the "preserve" part, though. Because what if your wife told you she'd divorce you if you didn't kill someone for her? The "preserve" part of that decision, then, becomes the preservation of the marriage -- or so it might first appear.
You can argue that a marriage worth preserving shouldn't require assassinations, or that there should be other ways to preserve a marriage without killing. I agree. But, then, I make the argument that MANY things that people are willing to kill for can be preserved in other ways.
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